The mirage of information

The seminar ‘Accumulations and accelerations: Le totalitarisme informatique II' is pleased to invite you to the fourth session of the series, with Pierre-Antoine Chardel, professor of philosophy and sociology at the EHESS, author of L’empire du signal. De l’écrit aux écrans, CNRS ed. 2020.

The attendance at the 10 sessions of the first seminar session dedicated to the all-encompassing grip of computing and the increasing number of critical publications on the subject justifies a second session. It will explore several falsehoods: "dematerialization" proves to be ecologically burdensome and humanly oppressive; the emancipatory prophecy of the Internet conceals an unprecedented centralization and bureaucratization; virtual currencies are a chimera, and "artificial intelligence," as foolish as other machines, masks issues of power and profit. It also obscures the main danger, namely that human intelligence may become mechanical and that individuals may lose their inner life.